To stop learning is like dying before you’re dead. Here are 10 business and life lessons I learned in the last 12 months.

1. Awesome People: If you know an awesome person – tell them how great they are. Life is fragile and if you don’t do it now, you may never get another chance.

2. Assholes: Don’t prioritize people who deliberately cause you constant stress. Laugh at their stupidity and put any response to their demands on your “shit to do after the important stuff” list.

3. Over Thinking: Try not to spend so long thinking about your goals that you don’t get anything done at all. Choose at least one priority and spend a bit of time each day working on it. Even if you’re not sure of your main life goals, at least you’ll get something done.

4. Sexism: Don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to deal with sexist assholes (aka inadequate men, with tiny dicks). Just refuse to tolerate them full stop – including sexist suppliers, customers and staff. Many workplaces are still rife with these tossers, and it’s about time more people in the workplace gave them the message that their behaviour won’t be tolerated.
5. Worrying: Try to stop worrying too much about what might happen, so you can focus on what is happening.
6. Ignoring: To turn a blind eye, or look the other way is just as bad as committing a crime yourself. Don’t be one of the 9 out of 10 people who do it.
7. Filtering: Absorb as much useful information as you can, from newspapers, blogs, books and other media. But don’t allow them to do your thinking for you.

8. Belief: Pray. It doesn’t matter if you believe in God, or the Tooth Fairy, but if you believe in nothing, you’re screwed.

9. Distractions: Recognise when you’re being side-tracked. Mindless distractions can help you to cope with the shit in your life, but using them on a regular basis won’t help you to fix things.

10. Useless Information: Cut out the noise. Allowing unhelpful advice and opinions to filter into your own thinking can stop you concentrating on what is important to you. You can cut out the noise by meditating, or spending 30 minutes alone each day.

Did you learn any business and life lessons in the last 12 months? Please share in the comments section.